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August 2012

I read an article a couple weeks ago encouraging parents to use lemonade stands as an early lesson on how businesses function (sorry I can’t find the link). It got me thinking about my Dad and the ways he encouraged my entrepreneurial spirit from an early age. He’s started two companies in his lifetime, one successful and one less so, and seeing he’s always been my biggest role model (except when I was 12-16, when everything he did embarrassed me, sorry Dad it was just puberty) I always viewed owning your own business as the ultimate success.

Coincidentally, the first way he got me interested in and taught me about running a business was by helping me set up my own lemonade stand. I was instantly hooked. Between the ages of 8-11, I was somewhat of a lemonade stand mogul; I would go over to friend’s houses and convince them that we should spend the day running a stand (my house was in a terrible location for the cutthroat lemonade business, so I had no choice but to have business partners). I can even remember doing some very basic A/B testing: trying different prices, different cup sizes, offering discounts for bulk purchases, selling other drinks besides lemonade as well as having food and even trying different lemonade brands. Its pretty funny looking back at it but there is no denying the profound impact these early experiences had on my views about how to make money.

The other day a buddy and I were just throwing startup ideas back and forth at each other, having some fun (super cool I know). One of the ideas I jokingly threw out was an investing platform where you put money in to fund a childs education, in exchange for a percent of their future earnings.

We both thought it was an interesting idea, but were unsure of the legality. As we fleshed the idea out a bit more it also became clear there were a lot questions that needed answering. For example, when does the funding start? Do wait until they graduate high school and see where they get accepted into college? Wait until they graduate college and have proven themselves in the workforce for a bit? What about something as extreme as at birth? How long must they forfeit part of their income? And what about if something happens and they decide they’re content working a minimum wage job for the rest of their lives? The list goes on and on. Clearly launching a startup such as this would be no easy task.